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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » After the ice. The Lib Dems’ prospects for 2024
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » After the ice. The Lib Dems’ prospects for 2024
Nemesis followed hubris so quickly for Jo Swinson, they were able to pass the relay baton in the exchange zone. No sooner had she mooted the possibility of her being the next Prime Minister than she found herself dumped out of Parliament. It is a short step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
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The LibDems' real problem is the rise of the SNP. Even in the 1960s and 70s when the Liberals won around a dozen seats each election (only six in 1970) they were the third-largest party in the House of Commons. That meant they were taken seriously by the media and would be invited to news and current affairs programmes.
With the same number of seats, they are now only our fourth party, trailing the SNP by a distance, and the invitations have dried to a trickle. Maybe not even fourth as the DUP did well at 2015 and 17. In short, whatever their stand on Brexit, whatever their stand on economics (and Ed Davey seemed to want to position the party somewhat to the right of the Conservatives), the LibDems do not matter.
But they might in 2024 if a resurgent Labour Party can force the LibDems to be kingmakers, perhaps once more propping up their right wing allies in return for a meaningless title and empty promises.
Happy Easter everyone!
Plus they lost the ethnic vote to Labour because a) Labour went all Trump on the Jews and b) The whole transgender its ok to have men in the toilets beside your little girls thing.
They should run on legalising weed - forget about rejoining the EU.
I do not see a way back for them in Wales. The Tories are the leading unionists, Plaid have swept up the old Welsh language vote, and Labour continue to rely on habit (although Brecon and Radnor suggested that was a habit that was breaking). So that’s a very long standing banker for the party lost.
You can trace the rise and fall of the LibDems to one key moment out of all the others: the decision unilaterally to Revoke Article 50. It even pissed off a lot of LibDems like me. It was incredibly ill-conceived, displaying a breathtaking conceit and disregard both for democracy and the British people.
In my then locality they presented themselves as pragmatic Conservatives, worried about efficiency and getting the (local) job done. Elsewhere they were non-loony-leftists, or sandal wearing dope-smokers. I am not sure that is possible for them to return to those green fields of pre-coalition. Voters have been there, and got the scars.
If I were advising them, I would suggest picking a handful of popular issues to own that the two big parties cower away from, and then just banging on about them. Some examples: legalising drugs, legalising prostitution, constitutional reform, localism, hypothecated taxes.
I would also suggest banning the words: Europe, gender, and pan-sexual.
LDs are going to be irrelevan for some time now the Tories face a reasonable candidate in voters eyes
Can the LibDems go back to being all things to all voters? Actually, the Conservative victory might encourage them. Otherwise the problem is not that LibDems are inconsistent as irrelevant. Why vote for the Tories' little helpers, their opponents on either side ask? If you want a Conservative government, why not vote Conservative? If you want Labour, you have to vote Labour because of what happened in 2010. There is no reason to vote LibDem if you have strong views about another party. And if you actually like LibDem policies then so what? You cannot trust them and Nick Clegg said as much in so many words.
Mr. Socky, indeed, many here (including me) said at the time it was a stupid decision.
It was particularly foolish given how long the odds were on the Lib Dems getting the majority necessary to implement that policy.
Far likelier to occur, and more palatable to the electorate, was a second referendum run along informed consent (rather than the bullshit 'People's vote') line.
Ultimately the way to be relevant is be in govt or look like you will be. The only way I see that happening is if Lib Dems take seats off the Tories.
The situation is compounded because Boris isn't a right-winger. He's a libertarian of soft-right persuasion and an internationalist.
So there's no room on the platform for the LibDems.
Both on that and on saying Jo Swinson: your next Prime Minister they massively overplayed their hand and made themselves a laughing stock.
I'd say their best bet in 2024 to capture seats is to play it cool with good media coverage. They effectively need to be yellow fiscal conservatives with a libertarian bent on the powers and scope of the state. Be the only sensible show in town on public spending. Don't refight old battles on Brexit (as they will be sorely tempted to) but consider the national/international cooperation issues as they come up in the context of 2024 and have something to say about them. They need also a good leader who's a media whore.
That could net them 15-16% of the vote and about 20-25 seats in Tory/LD seats, particularly in southern England.
Labour success is their success.
The 1992-7 Major was on its knees almost before it began, something only compounded by Black Wednesday. From then on the tories were doomed to be routed at the General Election. Following that Blair landslide the tories lurched to the right - under William Hague, Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. That left room for the LibDems on the platform.
The circumstances now are very different. Notwithstanding coronavirus, Boris Johnson is clearly NOT lurching to the right and he is extremely popular.
So if the LibDems are intending to gain momentum by capturing a non-existent vacancy on the soft-right, they could be waiting a very long time.
The two big parties have the huge advantage that they might actually form a government. This can also be an anchor, as we saw with T. May's social care plans.
The LDs can use the fact they are unlikely to have to do implementation as a plus. They should actively seek out controversial polices, it will get some voters enthused, others angry. But best of all it will get the LDs talked about.
True liberals would focus on moving to treating everyone as an individual where their colour, caste or sex is irrelevant and building a unity around that point of view - taking the heat out of socially divisive cultural theories.
My support has been waning badly for months, and if Moran becomes leader that will do it for me. I`ll then be politically homeless. I`d vote for the Liberal Party (the true liberals) but they don`t stand a candidate in my seat.
People are fed up being lied to and to then blame it on the NHS staff is just unbelievable.
(I'm using third person because I'm pissed off with the party. The unilateral Revocation of Article 50 blew it for me. Then competing against Remain candidates told me a lot more.)
They had accumulated a motley collection of parliamentary seats due to fortunate peaks and troughs since 1992. That was never sustainable unless they never did anything - ever - and even then that wasn't guaranteed. They still probably would have been washed away be the polarisation later in the 2010s.
They need to find a solid base of 15%+ of the electorate and 20+ seats that stick with them through thick and thin under multiple FPTP elections because their MPs do a very good job and they stand for something distinctive and important on the national stage.
It's hard to see what that is at the moment.
The rescind A50 policy was ill-conceived, but I understand the context. It was suited to the situation of the time where No Deal Brexit was going to happen on 31 October. Once there was a further extension (remember when Johnson was going to die in a ditch?), and a Deal it was obsolete. A referendum on the Deal then became possible again.
A lot depends these next years how government and opposition go after the pandemic. In 1990 the LDs famously went to zero in an opinion poll, in 1997 50+ seats.
There has always been a place for an internationalist party with financially sane policies and a social conscience, and there always will be.
No more Mister Nice Tories....
Book mark this post.
I imagine your huge organ is not getting much action nowadays.
Yes, but the trouble is that this is where Starmer will be positioning the Labour Party. The LDs need to hope that Labour continues its drift into group-think and wokey wackiness which will make liberals` stomachs turn.
On the Con side, the LDs need to bang on about what liberalism is - to educate the droves of liberals who "incorrectly" vote for the Tories.
Show me a nice Tory and I will show you a lying toerag.
The pandemic is more immediate, but the Climate Emergency is more of a threat over the next decades.
I was no great fan of Maggie, and I think her belief that the private sector was the solution was massively naive or deliberately mischievous, but that was still a quite astounding speech. It's well worth listening to it again and you'll realise that for all her mistakes she was a giant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg
Boris lacks Thatcher's oratory skills but he's much more socially libertarian than her. Pace Max Hastings, Boris could go far
I also think that the pandemic will make the appeal of stronger relations with Europe than either China or USA a no brained.
Many missed the mark but you sent the moon rocket to the Mariana trench.
Bravo.
I suspect a period of relative isolationism is likely in all countries.
They put everything on the demented revoke policy, tried to run a Prime Ministerial campaign around the unprepossessing Jo Swindon, and targeted their seats badly.
The “stalling” hides the fact that the circumstances for the Lib Dems were hardly better. “Par” was indeed to get into the 20s.
Daisy Cooper is their only hope now, as ridiculous as it sounds. Davey is just a less interesting Keir Starmer, and Layla Moran is pansexually batshit.
Policy-wise, there is still a niche for radicalism with a conservative face. Please stay the fuck away from gender politics, it will end you. Ditto Europe: you (we) lost; we should now be arguing for EEA.
Morning to you and yours. Another cracking day down here in Devon.
The Tories mustn`t underestimate the number of pro-EU fanatics out there. They have turned vindictive and have fugured out that the only way to get back into the EU, or at least keep us in permanant transition, is to defeat the Tories at the next GE.
They will have figured out two routes: firstly to urge the LDs to be selective in a GE, targeting Tory seats, and secondly to develop deplorable negative narratives around the Tories handling of the pandemic.
Some ugly politics ahead I fear.
Some good posts this morning.
All that mattered, it seemed, were red boxes and ministerial cars. Anything else could and would be traded away for the personal ambition of Nick Clegg. Even his price for the coalition were means to that end -- reform of the voting system to cement the LibDems into office.
And it was done so badly. There was no need to give away the crown jewels. It is not as if student fees and loans were an indispensible plank of the Conservative platform. David Cameron was holding no-one's feet to the fire on this. No, the problem was Clegg's team had not even read their own manifesto.
It was all for nothing.
How about: "freedom, tolerance, and fairness for all" and "the state shouldn't be acting like a Victorian father".
Because otherwise it sounds crackers.
* edit: "It provides a formula for balancing pessimism and optimism in decision-making under uncertainty".
Such a breath of fresh air from the torrid days of Corbyn and his cabal
He did not rise to the bait on Sophy's attempts to get him to attack HMG
It is good to see an opposition that looks as if it could cleanse itself of the Corbyn era and contribute greatly to the political discourse
I can’t even tug out the eight foot horn because the neighbours complain.
At the end of this disaster we're going to be in a position where the state is heavily indebted and may not be able to afford to borrow any more to fund the deficit; where people with means have been forced by regulation and by necessity to get used to less lavish lifestyles; and where the public services and the NHS in particular are lionised.
Events will also be playing against a background in which the Government is being lambasted for its various failings in the handling of the epidemic, and economic suffering is widespread (and disproportionately concentrated amongst its new voters in less well-off areas.)
In short, people who have money will have to be made to cough it up. Just gunning for the super-rich won't cut it - there are too few of them and it's too easy for them to run away - and ditto for the next tier below, which includes now untouchable figures like wealthy hospital consultants. Thus I would imagine that, in broad-brush terms, everyone earning more than the median wage is going to have to pay much more tax. That should be affordable for the large slice of that income bracket that is now working from home, and finds itself magically in possession of all that extra money that was previously wasted on commuting, but it's going to cause serious hardship for a lot of families that are mortgaged to the hilt and were only just about managing before this started.
Still, if we want a more Scandiwegian social dispensation then people must finally come to terms with the fact that they have to pay for it themselves, rather than expecting other people to do all the heavy lifting. This will create both winners and losers, which is tough on the losers - but public policy always does that.
Finally, there is one important and obvious factor working in favour of the Government: no economically liberal, low-tax party sitting to the right of them, and little prospect of such a thing emerging. The Brexit Party is a busted flush and the Liberal Democrats are too left-wing in temperament to move to occupy that space.
Of course, the government is already doing all of these things, and more. It is looking for new technology, new designs, and for new makers of existing products, at home and abroad.
But the effort is leaving ministers (and presumably civil servants) exhausted, and it is not being done very well or very quickly.
Trouble is, the only person who can create a new ministry is Boris who is not here, and the person who might urge action on these lines, who has been critical of government logistics for years, is Dominic Cummings who has handed in his own sicknote.